Decisive Measures

by Decisive Measures (retail) (epub)

  I walked over to Layla, who was huddled in a corner talking to the boy. I touched her shoulder but almost flinched at the look she gave me. ‘We have to get ready,’ I said.

  She shook her head. ‘You mean you do. I’m staying here.’

  ‘You can’t do that. It’s crazy.’

  She gave me a level stare. ‘You’re coming back for the mercenaries, aren’t you? Or are they to be left to die too?’

  ‘Of course I’m coming back.’

  She shrugged. ‘Then I’ll return with them.’

  Grizz came charging over. ‘Jack, for God’s sake get out there before that heli’s overrun.’ I hesitated, still holding Layla’s gaze, then I turned and ran for the Huey.

  The expatriates ran for it too as I fired up the engines. A crowd of black workers began trying to force the gates of the compound. The massive figures of Hendrik and Reuben were at the heart of a group of mercenaries firing over their heads and into the dust at their feet, trying to hold them back. At a command from Rudi, Reuben turned and jogged to the helicopter. He swung himself up into the cab.

  ‘Grizz? What’s going on?’ I said into the intercom. ‘The Huey’s already seriously overloaded. You’re the door gunner. We don’t need him as well.’

  ‘I’m also the boss,’ Grizz said. ‘We’ve two GPMGs. I can’t fire both of them and we need every gun hand we can load on to this crate.’

  ‘If we’re too overloaded, we won’t get airborne.’

  ‘Just try it, will you?’

  I hesitated, sick at heart, staring back towards the entrance to the container building, where Layla’s slim figure was still hunched in the shadows next to the boy.

  ‘What are you waiting for? Let’s get out of here,’ Grizz said.

  The turbine whined its way up the octaves. I raised the collective to bring the Huey to a hover, but it barely lifted on its springs. I pushed the collective right up to the stops but the heli remained rooted to the ground, shuddering with the vibrations of the engines as they strained at maximum power.

  ‘I’ll have to try a running take-off,’ I said.

  I used the cyclic to set the heli lumbering slowly across the compound. It ground its way slowly forward, the skid plates scraping and rattling at the earth. If I could squeeze enough momentum out of it to lift the rotors into clean, undisturbed air, free of the turbulence of the ground effect, in theory we would achieve translational lift – the rotors would bite and send us soaring upwards.

  That was the aim. At the moment, we were still bumping along the ground, carving furrows in the red dirt of the compound with the skids. Just short of the perimeter fence I paddled the right rudder – turning with the torque increased the available power to the main rotors – and came around.

  We accelerated again across the compound. The heli rocked as the skids rumbled over the rutted ground.

  We were moving too fast to make another ground turn and the fence was now looming. I hauled on the collective. For a moment the heli remained earthbound, but then I felt a sudden jerk as the rotors bit into clean air, free of the turbulence of the downwash.

  As the perimeter wire seemed to rush towards us, we crept a few feet above the earth. I swung the heli around just in time to miss the fence and nosed it back across the compound, barely airborne and still trapped by the fence surrounding us.

  We crawled back across the compound, not gaining an inch of altitude. I brought the Huey to a hover a few feet above the floor of the compound. The vibrations increased and after a moment the by now familiar screech of the low RPM warning began to sound.

  The battle between power and weight was being lost, and inch by inch the Huey was slowly sinking back towards the ground. I had to find a way to reduce the power demand for a moment or I’d lose control of the ship altogether.

  I eased the collective down a fraction, letting the Huey drift downwards. My reward was to hear the turbines pick up. The warning siren died away, and as soon as the heli stabilised I eased the collective up again and the Huey rose back into the air.

  Once more, however, even though I pulled in maximum power, as soon as the Huey began to rise out of the ground effect, it started to settle back down again. I repeated the manoeuvre and, perhaps helped by the loss of fuel weight as I kept the engines bellowing, this time I managed to squeeze a few more revs and at last got the Huey level with the top of the compound fence. I kept parallel to it, building the revs as much as I could. Then I took a deep breath and banked hard right, praying that the power boost I could nick from allowing the Huey to swing with the torque would be enough to lift us clear of the fence.

  The coils of razor wire along the top disappeared beneath us. I was just beginning to exhale when there was a savage jerk. The nose dipped and I fought the controls to stabilise the heli, holding it in a hover as the engines screamed under the load.

  Grizz’s voice came over the intercom. ‘We’re caught. One of the wheels has snagged the razor wire.’

  I glanced behind into the cab. He was hanging out of the door. ‘I’ll have to free it. Get me roped up.’

  He wriggled back in and Reuben tied a rope around his chest, padding it with his shirt. Grizz picked up a pair of metal shears from the toolkit and Reuben lowered him out of the door. He hung suspended for a moment out of reach of the wire and the skids. Then Reuben began to swing him like a pendulum.

  Slowly at first, Grizz swung away in a wider and wider arc. I heard him grunt as he grabbed and missed the shaft of the skids, then he grabbed again and held.

  His voice came again over the intercom. ‘Back five.’

  I eased the heli back. I saw a strand of wire curl up into my vision as he cut through it and heard his laboured breathing.

  A gust of wind hit the heli, pushing it a few feet. ‘Hold it,’ I said into the intercom, working the controls to bring us back. Just then I heard the snap of the razor wire parting, followed by a scream. The heli lurched and one end of the severed wire lashed the side of the cockpit like a whip. It left a bloody trail across the Perspex.

  Reuben’s voice cut in on the intercom. ‘We’ve got to land again. Grizz is down there.’

  I swung the heli around, craning my neck to look down. A figure lay sprawled in the dirt, one leg twisted underneath him. The flying razor wire had sliced through the rope and sent Grizz plunging to the earth, but the fall was not what had killed him.

  The wire had also cut clean through his neck, severing his head.

  Reuben’s voice came again. ‘We have to land.’

  ‘We can’t,’ I said. ‘We’re overloaded already and the fence is down. If we land there those guys will rush us. Besides, there’s nothing we can do for Grizz. He’s dead. We’ll have to leave him here.’

  ‘You don’t leave a comrade behind, even if he is dead.’

  ‘This time we’ll have to. I thought the world of Grizz too, but if we land to pick up his body, we’ll never get airborne.’ I raised the collective again and pushed the cyclic forward, ending the argument.

  The ship groaned and shook as it climbed slowly away from the compound. I flew in a daze, only dimly aware of the landscape passing below me and the feel of the controls in my hands.

  At last, in the distance ahead, I saw the surf haze hanging over the coast. Then the grey rutted concrete of the airport runway came into view. As we made our approach, a few bursts of ground fire greeted us, but it was sporadic and barely threatening.

  I eased down the collective, flared and landed.

  I killed the engines and slumped in my seat, feeling the sweat soaking through my flying suit. The expats tumbled from the heli, laughing and joking as they hurried across the concrete towards the terminal. I went the other way, to the edge of the airfield where I bought some food and a drink from a stall.

  I sat down in the shade of a fuel bunker as a fuel bowser trundled across the hardstanding towards the Huey. Then I heard the scrunch of feet on the dusty concrete and a shadow fell across me. I looked up.

 
‘Don’t get up,’ said a clipped, English voice. ‘Henry Pleydell. We met at Bohara when you first came out here.’

  I nodded. ‘I remember you, Colonel.’

  ‘You’ve done a great job for us, Jack,’ he said. ‘Grizz has told us.’

  ‘Grizz is dead.’

  He pursed his lips, and a bead of sweat trickled down his forehead and splashed on to the front of his neatly pressed shirt. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ he said. He nodded to himself, then went on, his manner once more brisk and businesslike. ‘We have reports that Liberian troops are massing on the frontier. Some may even have crossed it. The mining company is no longer prepared to meet the cost of countering a full-blown invasion. So we’re pulling out, Jack, and leaving the Nigerians to fight it out.’

  ‘Until the next time,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure we’ll be back when the situation permits. But in the meantime we need you to fly just a couple more missions, to bring out the rest of the garrison and a package.’

  ‘What sort of package?’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘It is a diamond mine, old boy.’ He paused. ‘Get airborne as soon as you can. There’ll be a healthy bonus in it for you when they’re safely delivered.’

  ‘The diamonds or the men?’

  A fleeting look of irritation passed across his face. ‘Both, of course. You don’t think we’d leave them to die, do you?’

  ‘I need a door gunner and a co-pilot,’ I said.

  ‘Door gunner is no problem. Take Reuben. But I’m afraid you’ll have to keep flying solo. We’ve moved heaven and earth to try to find one in these last few days. We even offered double rates, but there were still no takers. People believe all sorts of rumours.’

  ‘Quite,’ I said. ‘So what ordnance have you got here? Are there rockets for the pod?’

  He shook his head. ‘Just rounds for the guns, I’m afraid.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Well, good luck then.’

  As he walked away, Reuben began to load boxes of explosives into the heli.

  ‘Demolition charges?’ I said.

  Reuben didn’t even turn his head. ‘You fly the helicopter,’ he said. ‘We’ll take care of the rest.’

  * * *

  It was dusk before we took off and I made the customary transition to night-vision goggles for the flight. For once there was little gunfire to greet us as I flew in towards Bohara. It was as if, secure in their impending victory, the rebels had pulled back to recuperate before the final assault.

  Rudi supervised the unloading of the demolition charges. They were at once fitted into backpacks and Raz, Reuben and Hendrik, their faces obscured with cam cream, slipped out of the gate and disappeared into the darkness, moving towards the mine workings.

  Rudi spat in the dust. ‘Waste of good plant,’ he said. ‘The Kaffirs couldn’t use it anyway.’

  I turned and walked away from him into the container building. I searched both tiers from one end to the other, then walked right around the compound. There was no sign of Layla.

  I began stopping everyone I passed. ‘Where’s Layla?’ I asked. ‘Where’s Layla?’ All shook their heads or shrugged. I reached the main gate. ‘Where’s Layla?’ I said to the guard.

  ‘She went out an hour before dusk,’ he said. ‘She insisted she had some medicines for a patient in the workers’ compound and wouldn’t take no for an answer.’

  ‘Was there a boy with her, an African kid?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I knew at once where she had gone.

  I returned to the building sick at heart. Rudi was sitting at a table, cleaning his fingernails with the point of a knife.

  ‘Layla’s missing,’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘So?’

  ‘I have to find her.’

  He laughed. ‘When you’ve done the job you’re paid for then you can go walkabout in the bush, crybaby. Right now, we’ve enough to do without worrying about some coloured bitch who’s gone native.’

  I looked away, waiting until I had controlled my anger. ‘How soon do we leave?’

  ‘The first group will go as soon as the demolition teams are back.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘We’ll hold the fort until you come back for us.’

  We sat in silence for an hour until the demolition teams returned. Rudi selected eight men and sent them out to the heli. With all their kit, it was once more going to be dangerously overloaded.

  ‘There’s one more passenger,’ Rudi said.

  As I began to protest, I saw two men running from the container building, carrying a burden between them.

  Grizz’s corpse had been flexicuffed at the wrists and ankles to make it easier for them to carry. They ran stooping with it to the heli and tossed it inside without ceremony. Hendrik returned a final time with the severed head wrapped in a piece of sacking. He threw it on to the floor of the cab and I saw one of the mercenaries push it under the seat with the toe of his boot.

  Only Rudi, Raz, Reuben and Hendrik now remained to hold the compound. ‘Make sure you’re back to lift us before dawn,’ Rudi said.

  I held out my hand. ‘The diamonds.’

  ‘Oh no. The diamonds stay here. If we let you fly out of here with them, what guarantee do we have that you’ll come back for us?’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about the diamonds,’ I said. ‘All I want to do is get everybody out alive.’

  ‘I’m touched by your concern, but perhaps Decisive Measures might have other priorities. This way we have an insurance policy.’

  I fired up the helicopter and took off into the night. Somewhere in the blackness below me was Layla, if she was still alive.

  As soon as we landed back at the airport, Colonel Pleydell and the Decisive Measures quartermaster strode out to meet us. The colonel was immediately surrounded by the mercenaries, airing the traditional soldiers’ grievances about pay. While they argued, I shouted for a body bag. The quartermaster sauntered to a bunker and came back with a black rubber bag. I spread it out on the ground. ‘Help me carry him out of the cab,’ I said.

  We lifted Grizz’s body and laid it down on the rubber. ‘We need to cut the flexicuffs off him,’ I said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter to him.’

  ‘It does to me. Just do it.’

  He shrugged and cut off the flexicuffs with a knife.

  I climbed back into the cab and pulled out the head from under the seat. I unwrapped it from the sacking, but could not bring myself to look at the face as I tried to arrange it in the body bag to give it some semblance of dignity.

  ‘Make sure anyone who handles that shows some respect,’ I said.

  The quartermaster nodded. We lifted the bag on to the back of his Jeep and he drove across the airfield towards a waiting charter jet.

  The colonel brushed the angry mercenaries aside and pushed his way through to me. ‘You have the diamonds?’

  ‘They’re coming on the next trip.’

  His thin, bloodless lips tightened. ‘Those were not your orders.’

  ‘I know that. Rudi and his mates back there weren’t too eager about the original arrangement.’

  He made a visible effort to control his anger. ‘How soon can you be airborne again?’

  ‘As soon as I’m refuelled.’

  He turned away and started barking orders at the ground crew. They responded with sullen indifference and it was a good forty minutes before the fuel bowser had been brought out to fill up the tanks.

  There was an understandable lack of enthusiasm among the mercenaries for one of them to act as a door gunner for the final mission to Bohara. The colonel tried bluster, cajolery and bribery in turn.

  The plan that had been forming in my mind crystallised while I listened to the arguments. ‘Don’t sweat it, Colonel,’ I said. ‘I’ve managed without a co-pilot for the last few missions. I’m sure I can fly this one without a door gunner.’ I settled the matter by turning away and pulling on my helmet as I hurried towards the cab.

  I
checked in with the tower, then I was airborne in a cloud of dust, banking south-east, back towards Bohara. Assuming I made it there, what happened after would depend entirely on Rudi, but I was pretty confident that I had his measure.

  I switched on the night-vision goggles at two thousand feet, allowing time for my eyes to become accustomed to the green-tinged, negative vision of the world below me before I began the descent.

  I maintained radio silence until I was only a few miles from Bohara, then jabbed the radio button. ‘Bohara, this is Grizzly One. Time for the last bus home. Give me a little light there, will you?’

  Rudi’s guttural Afrikaaner tones came at once through the static. ‘Stand by. We’ll light you in. There’ll be a little diversion too.’

  I saw the specks of green light flare in the distance as they began the prearranged signal: two long flashes, one short, three long.

  As I slowed, preparing to land, the darkness beyond the base was lit by a series of blinding flashes as the demolition charges on the mine equipment erupted in succession.

  A moment later the first ground fire cracked around me. I jinked and dodged, keeping the Huey moving around. The compound loomed ahead of me and I landed close to the container building.

  Heavy weapon rounds were crashing down around the compound and the incoming fire redoubled as the remnants of the garrison – Raz, Reuben and Hendrik – sprinted for the cab.

  Rudi was the last to leave the building. He sprinted low to the ground, clutching his rifle in his right hand and a chained steel case the size of a small cash box in his left. He dived through the door of the cab, yelling ‘Go! Go! Go!’

  I rammed up the collective and the Huey was airborne again. Torrents of tracer fire ripped through the night around us.

  We were a bare three hundred feet above the compound when the container building detonated. Flames climbed halfway towards the Huey.

  The lack of return fire from the base must have told the rebels the last of the garrison had gone, and the ground fire ceased all at once, as if it had been switched off. I imagined them running through the darkness, tearing down the gates to loot whatever was left.